preaching: You Give Them Something to Eat

Sermon text: Mark 6:30-44

Stream it from the Gathering Church site or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.

reflecting: Mark 6:30-44

Have you ever seen one of those “hoarder shows” on TV?  

They’re kind of fascinating, but they’re also kind of upsetting.  

Reality television is largely a case-in-point that truth, or at least “real life,” is stranger than fiction.  When I was watching, I was about to totally disengage with the lives on the screen, till a behavioral psychologist came on.  It seems that these professionals’ main role is to get to the bottom of some fundamental problem of “enough-ness” in their patient.

I can connect with this issue.  The old man on the program hoarded because, in his estimation, there was a good chance that at some point there just was not going to be enough.  He held onto things and food and memories because he didn’t believe that the future will be so kind to him.  

The sad irony was that this holding onto resulted in him being threatened with losing his home because it was dangerous, losing his relationships because he had alienated the people closest to him, and losing his own possessions because of rust, corrosion and rot.

Sunday we’ll explore a famous passage in Mark’s Gospel (Mark 6:30-44), but common to all four accounts, about Jesus feeding more than 5.000 people with just 5 loaves and 2 fish.  Sounds suspicious given the lack of “enough-ness” in Jesus’ camp.

We get the privilege of not only hearing the good news about how Jesus manages this, but we also get to participate in a meal of communion together, remembering another dramatic moment when Jesus fed his disciples with bread.  Look forward to seeing you then.

reflecting: Mark 4:21-34

This Sunday we'll continue on in chapter 4 of Mark's Gospel.  This chapter is laden with stories and teachings by Jesus on the Kingdom of God.  I can't help but remember, when I read this chapter of farmers and mustard seeds, when I was called on to preach one of my first sermons to a rural North Carolinian congregation two years ago.  It was pretty intimidating to drive to work everyday that summer past fields and barns and then try to explicate how the Kingdom of God is like something that they knew far more intimately about than I do.  

But maybe that's the point.

The Kingdom of God is like a seed, even like a mustard seed.  Small, but when nourished and come to fruition, yielding great and surprising things.  Mysterious at its core.  We rely on seeds and their fruit everyday (ie "our daily bread"), but can we really explain them, can we totally domesticate or control them, or do we, at some point just have to sit back and relish in the mysterious bounty and sustenance they provide us?

I look forward to meeting this Sunday to learn more about, to participate in, and to continue to imagine this mysterious Kingdom of God with you.  I thank God that his kingdom resists mine, or ours, or really anybody's attempts to control it.  I thank God for the mysterious, manna-like provision with which He keeps us and pray for the faith and patience and awe to really appreciate a loving God that works that way.  Finally, I pray that I get used to that kind of Kingdom, which looks and feels so different from any kingdom I would imagine on my own or try to make for myself.

Here is the manuscript for the sermon given (sorry there's no audio, but if you were there you'd understand why there is no audio!)

reflecting: Mark 3:7-21

This Sunday, we continue to follow Mark’s narrative of Jesus’ ministry (Mark 3:7-21). Fresh off the heals of Jesus’ surprising encounters with the Pharisees and the crowds where he gives a fresh vision of the Sabbath, wineskins, and what it means to be in the presence of Christ (in short: the feasting and celebration that belongs to a wedding!), we find a bit of a summary of what’s been happening. 

Crowds. 

Impure Spirits. 

Different levels of recognition. 

And a sort of expansion and contraction. 

By that I mean, the withdrawing of Jesus before the crowding around him; the gathering of his disciples before the sending of them to preach and drive out demons. This might seem exhausting. We know what it’s like to be busy, over-extended, scattered. 

But it is Jesus, who brings us together. That brings us to Himself, in order to send us back out to involve others in this dynamic life with God. It is Jesus who also has the discipline to retreat to a quiet place, to narrow everything down to communion with his Father, before re-igniting His hectic life of being “for” others. 

This retreat and mission, contraction and expansion, receiving and giving, reminds me of something that Paul leads with in his Second Letter to the Corinthians (2 Cor 1:3-5): 

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. 

As we gather this Sunday, I invite you to come to the Fount, the source of comfort, refreshment, forgiveness, and life-abundance, that you may share in these gifts, be recharged, and be (as John Jay mentions) re-membered for the purpose of offering that the power, love, friendship, and resurrection-hope to others who are hurting in our families, communities, and world. I pray that we all might find time and space to be with Him, that He might then send us out.

reflecting: Mark 1:12-13/Luke 4:1-13

As we’ve previously seen in Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ coming marks the beginning of a reign.  The names and lingo surrounding Jesus are regal and politically charged (“gospel,” “Anointed One,” “Son of God”).  And we all know that the whole point of having a king is to concentrate authority in one place.  In short, Jesus comes onto the scene and anyone (or thing) who has had dominion is threatened to have that power toppled.

In a world with violent political unrest in the headlines on a daily basis (Egypt, could be Haiti next…), we assume what it means for Jesus to do this.  When the “heavens are torn open” we might imagine some sort of theme music being cued, fanfare, etc.  But then, almost inexplicably, the Spirit leads Jesus into the dessert.

The writer of Mark’s gospel briefly alludes to this, but leaves the details out.  However, we can supplement our understanding with Luke’s account.  In chapter 4 in Luke, he narrates the three temptations Jesus faces in the wilderness.  These temptations and how Jesus meets them show what his kingdom and Kingship are going to be about: not just the ends but also the means.  In doing so they assault the ways we might be accustomed to think.  They show us a clear picture of who’s the real King and who’s not.

The hungry Jesus is challenged to make bread from stones.  Something he no doubt could have easily done.  He resists this temptation, because, while his kingship will meet needs in the most complete and sweeping way possible, drawing from a bottomless supply of resources, he will not turn the stuff of creation into a commodity.  Eugene Peterson mentions in his brilliant book The Jesus Way: “ The devil wants us to [give into this temptation]: follow Jesus but then use Jesus to fulfill needs, first our own and then the needs of all the hungry people around us.”  King Jesus won’t do it.  Instead he’ll go hungry.  He’ll suffer in order to bring his kingdom into being.

The second temptation is to throw Himself off the highest point so that a band of angels may catch him.  The devil challenges Jesus to dazzle.  To show off a bit.  To compensate for the, up until this point, anti-heroic shape his kingship is taking.  Jesus resists.  He will not be used as a “hedge against boredom.”  He will not be just another thrill to be sought, or cause to be rallied for.  Jesus’ kingdom campaign doesn’t need pyrotechnics or viral advertising.

The final temptation leveled against Jesus is to be co-opted.  The devil offers Jesus something he already has: authority.  Jesus resists.  He knows what he has and who he is.  He knows he doesn’t have to “sell-out” in order to “make it.”  He trusts his Father to accomplish his mission.  Perhaps “the devil wants us to use Jesus in the same way.  Use Jesus to run our families, our neighborhoods, our schools, our governments as efficiently and properly as we can, but with no love or forgiveness.”

Jesus, by establishing his Kingship in the wilderness, a Kingship that withstands these worldly, by-the-book measures, really exposes other kings (lowercase “k”); exposes them in the sense that they can’t rule like he can, nor are they willing to.  The very trials the devil put to Jesus, which he withstood, are the very trials we pray against in the Lord’s Prayer.  Because we know they’re tempting, but we also know who the Real King is.

I can’t help it, I’m a Disney-phile, but perhaps if coming out of the baptismal waters and heading towards the wilderness Jesus had a theme-song, it might have sounded a bit like one from the 1973 animated Robin Hood.

Living in an England ruled by Phony King John in a phony way, Robin Hood exposes him for who he is, a fake unfit to wear the crown or receive the people’s trust and obeisance.  Jesus not only announces this, but is the alternative: the real King pronouncing a “pox on the phony kings” who do things in phony ways.

preaching: Advent I: Hope

Sermon text: Isaiah 2:1-5

Stream it from the Gathering Church site or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.

Download a Reading Plan and Devotional here: http://www.allgather.org/advent/.

Check out the upcoming 'Christmas Nights' record here: http://www.allgather.bandcamp.com/.

NT Wright/Andy Crouch/Rob Bell at Duke Divinity School

Here's the agenda:


Friday, Oct 8 | 3:30-5
Goodson Chapel


Revelation and Christian Hope: Political Implications of the Revelation to John
(with C. Kavin Rowe)


Monday, Oct 11 | 11-12:30; 2-3
Page Auditorium

The Living Witness:

Tradition, Innovation, and the Church

Tuesday, Oct 12 | 9-10:30

Page Auditorium

The Living Witness:

Tradition, Innovation, and the Church

Tuesday, Oct 12 | 2-3:15

Page Auditorium

The Living Witness:

Tradition, Innovation, and the Church

Hickman Lecture

processing: Summer 2010 Reading (I)

For The Beauty of the Church

Ed. David Taylor

Since meeting a popular songwriter we hosted in college and being told to check out Steve Turner's Imagine, I've maintained a detached interest in the merger of theology and the arts.  As my theological mind has expanded, so too has my appetite for this intersection.  Duke's (by way of Austin, TX) David Taylor writes and edits this wonderful volume replete with talented and interesting authors and a panoply of perspectives.  Besides Peterson, who can hardly do wrong by me, I was surprised, edified and provoked by John Witvliet Worship piece (I look forward to thinking about original songwriting & worship with some amazing songwriters in our community) and especially Jeremy Begbie's musing on Art and Eschatology.  I highly recommend this to anyone who's ever even considered the role of art in the life of the Church.

Practice Resurrection

Eugene Peterson

The capstone to his prolific Spiritual Theology series, Peterson embarks on a thorough and serious treatment of growing up, being the Church, and living in terms of the resurrection existence Christ inaugurated, as articulated by the letter to the Ephesians.  I really appreciated how constructive this work was.  While providing harsh and prophetic criticism towards the failed and unfaithful ways we North American Christians attempt to build, progress, and grow, the tone and timbre of the whole matches the exciting, creative, and counterintuitive character of the great biblical letter it explicates.

Resident Aliens

Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon

About halfway through this book I really began to resent whoever chose our entrance reading requirements a couple years ago for Duke.  While Dean Well's Power and Passion was somewhat helpful, I can't really think of something else that could provide such a succinct and challenging primer to how things are thought and done at Duke than Prof. Hauerwas' and Bishop Willimon's landmark book.  I might have spoken louder, earlier, and more often in some precepts had I tackled this one prior to the summer before my final two semesters.  Spanning ecclesial ethics, the dangers of no-holds-barred modernism, and introing a Yoderian, post-Constantinian vision, these two master communicators also realize the importance of both eschatology and worship for the life of the Church in the world.  This work begs to be engaged with and achieves the provocation the cover advertises.

The Prodigal God

Tim Keller

I was really excited to dig into this one.  The final parable in the Luke 15 series has always been one of my favorites to read, preach, and re-evaluate.  This fall at Gathering Church, we're looking to focus on Keller's take.  His dealing stuck me as a bit unique, devoting a lot of space to the consideration of the older brother in the story (and going on to portray Jesus as True Elder Brother), going as far as to interpret him as but one of a couple of Lost Sons in the story.  I liked the accessibility and intrigue created by this.  It seems it will be a great entry point for those without a ton of study and small group experience as well as those, who know the story well.  It also made me go back to last summer's read: Volf's Exclusion and Embrace, to re-visit his brilliant exegesis of the characters within this keystone parable.  One main gripe I have is the  over-villianization of the Pharisee character in the story.  While I don't deny the teeth the the story has towards that crowd, the NPP-reader and Mel Gibson critic in me cringes at the careless portrayal of Jews as the epitome of flagrant unfaith.  All this said, I'll return back to Prodigal God (no spoiler alert: prodigal means extravagant, excessive) quite a bit more as a resource.

Deep Church

Jim Belcher
Anyone looking for some sort of positive assessment of the messy tangle encountering evangelical(-ish) church-life to come, should pick this one up.  Belcher offers an accessible and erudite survey of the landscape and painstakingly critiques and offers a way forward (which he, following CS Lewis coins the deep church).  This "third way," for him, is rarely a synthesis of the other two poles, though Belcher possesses all the charity, skill, and machinery to form such syntheses.  Belcher instead looks and, more often than not, finds a true new way.  This way of Orthodoxy and Engagement, truth and warmth, set-apartness and engagement must be the way forward and the type of leaders needed for such a grand endeavor must be committed to ecumenism, creativity, and generosity.  I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  It accurately mapped and widely conversed un order to generate a gravitational vision around the Triune God in community.  Well done.

jamming: Jakob Dylan- Women & Country

Perhaps the other duo of unmentionables, besides religion and politics, is women and country.  Or maybe Dylan, like his dad did so expertly before him, shows how these things are the most mentionable,  the unmistakable currency with which we deal, like it or not.  It is both women & country root us to the stuff of our lives: conflict, loyalty, relationship, hardship, violence, love and lust.

While it has been unfortunately advocated that all is fair in love and war, Dylan ventures into the complicated homeland where love can be warfare, and war the result of disordered affection.

This record bridges Dylan’s barebones, Rick Rubin-produced Seeing Things with T-Bone Burnett’s intense production from the Krauss/Plant Raising Sand record.  Alongside Neko Case (New Pornographers), Kelly Hogan, and a throbbing, consistent upright bass, Dylan finds conveys the lonely forsakenness of exile in tracks like Everybody’s Hurting and Holy Roller’s for Love.  The opener sounds the most optimistic note, a combination campfire sing-along and unconvinced praise chorus.

Dylan weaves a masterful soundtrack for troubled times, giving voice to the difficulties while sounding a call to band together:

We hold our ground.

We don’t kneel

If we go down, 

We go down on our own shields.

Sure, we may be inside of a “bottomless well,” these might be dire straits and we may in fact go down, but it’ll be together and it’ll be fighting.  But, this fighting is not the scrappy, desperate fighting of the blaze-of-glory patriot, but the convinced loyalty of a lover.  All this dejection in relationship and citizenship forges a new identity.  After all “faith is believing what you see ain’t so,” and a crazy world good at making extremists.  Dylan crafts hymns for this new persona, these holy rollers.

These are the ones who understand women and country best.  Because they are willing to sacrifice, unwilling to be party to the deception and destruction.  Underneath the mellow, chugging sounds, lies a zealous, subversive record of true protest songs.

Priests? Really?

Mark has asked me to start posting on the church blog each Thursday. Here is the first go:

I’ve been thinking a lot about becoming a priest lately.

Not in a crisis-of-identity sort of way. After all, my mom always thought I would be a Catholic priest. When someone tells you that, it can be construed as a sort of backhanded complement: you’re pious and sweet, but you may be neither marriable or employable. I’ve proven to be both (somewhat). So that’s settled.

Since Sunday, when Mark challenged us with our identity as God’s priests in the world (1 Peter 2:9; podcast), I’ve been trying to consider what that looks like. No, I don’t mean how weird it might look during our potluck to have everyone wearing clerical collars, but what it might feel like and take to be such a priest.

I think back to my Catholic childhood, full of good priests and not-so-good ones. I try to remember what I thought of in my encounters with the good ones. I think of vows they take: poverty, chastity, & stability. Each of these represent their self-giving and devotion. At their best they present a brilliant witness to both Christ’s way and the life of Christian discipleship. I think of the parish priest who is always available. Who welcomes the outsider. Who is so for people that they understand that God too is for them. I think of the relentless monks at the Abbey where my brother went to school, praying and singing at all hours. I remember the joy and contentment of these set-apart fellows. I remember the grace and appreciation shown to me, the husky, irreverent altar boy, ringing the bells at the wrong times and always forgetting my dress shoes. All these things made these priests accessible, and by extension, made God accessible to me.

Consider with me, in this time leading up to Easter, what it might mean to take up this mantle as priests. What if the Gathering Church continued to grow into a community of priests, being present to both God and our neighbors? Connecting people to God by revealing God’s “rare relentless grace.” What might it look like in our city, if the Good News was proclaimed in and by a handful of holy lives pointing wholly to Christ?

Link to original post: http://www.allgather.org/2010/02/25/priests-really/

praying: on All Saints Day

Mary-born Lord, humble us so that we also might say, "Let it be with me according to your word."

We are tempted to will our way to humility because we just do not trust you with your creation.

Someone has to make this world come out right. Thank you for surrounding us with your saints, whose lives remind us what your work looks like.

Your saints are a funny lot- weird and wonderful. They often make us laugh, Sarah-like, and through laughter we discover humility.

God, it is wonderful to be made a part of your entertainment so that the world might be freed from sin. Amen.

(taken from Dr. Hauerwas' Prayers Plainly Spoken: "Your Saints Are A Funny Lot")

On the Feast of Saint Francis of Assisi

St Francis once was living at the Convent of the Portiuncula, with Brother Masseo of Marignano, a man of great sanctity and great discernment, who held frequent converse with God; for which reason St Francis loved him much. One day, as St Francis was returning from the forest, where he had been in prayer, the said Brother Masseo, wishing to test the humility of the saint, went forth to meet him exclaiming: “Why after thee? Why after thee?” To which St Francis made answer: “What is this? What meanest thou?” Brother Masseo answered: “I mean, why is it that all the world goeth after thee; why do all men wish to see thee, to hear thee, and to obey thy word? For thou art neither comely nor learned, nor art thou of noble birth. How is it, then, that all the world goeth after thee?” St Francis, hearing these words, rejoiced greatly in spirit, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, remained for a long space with his mind rapt in God; then, coming to himself, he knelt down, returning thanks to God with great fervour of spirit, and addressing Brother Messeo, said to him: “Wouldst thou know why all men come after me? Know that it is because the Lord, who is in heaven, who sees the evil and the good in all places - because, I say, his holy eyes have found among men no one more wicked, more imperfect, or a greater sinner than I am; and to accomplish the wonderful work which he intends to do, he has found no creature more vile than I am on earth; for which reason he has chosen me, to confound all strength, beauty, greatness, noble birth, and all the science of the world, that men may learn that every virtue and every good gift cometh from him, and not from any creature, that none may glory before him; but if any one glory, let him glory in the Lord, to whom belongeth all glory in eternity.” Then Brother Masseo, at such a humble answer, given with so much fervour, was greatly impressed, and learned of a certainty that St Francis was well grounded in humility.

-Chapter X from the Little Flowers of Saint Francis of Assisi

processing: Summer Reading: Part II

No Country For Old Men- Cormac McCarthy

If you can believe it, McCarthy's writing is more haunting than the on-screen portrayal by Javier Bardem. Per usual, his writing is grim, violent, graphic. We are left to ponder the futility of our 'good fight'. Is there even such a thing? The protagonist drifts into the territory of moral ambiguity and we are left feeling disoriented when we realize that the serial killing bounty hunter possesses a singularity and ethic not found in the so-called 'good guy'. Through all this, the narrator, Sheriff Bell seems to be the only one willing to acknowledge the worlds (and his own) decline. Along with, The Road, this book should be on everyone's required reading.

Our Endangered Values- Jimmy Carter

Former President Carter seems to have uniquely improved his legacy more with his post-White House career and tireless advocacy than by anything he did as president. This account is an interesting combination of what else- politics and religion- the two things not to bring up. Knowing both President Carter's devotion to peacemaking and justice (through Atlanta's Carter Center) and his ongoing mediation in Baptist life (New Baptist Covenant & CBF), it is nice to get a firsthand account of his motivations and presuppositions. While I don't agree with him on everything, I admire his courage, incredible endurance, and unwavering posture of engagement and dialogue.

Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World- A.J. Jacobs

I came across this one because I had read his A Year of Living Biblically and curiously enough picked it up at the same time as my friend Nick from church (and disc golf) was getting through it. Jacobs essentially chronicles his quest by picking out and occasionally revisiting the oddest, most profound, and down-right wackiest entries in the EB. What makes it interesting is his wit, candor, and occasional vulnerability when discussing insights from material as varied as Ecclesiastes and aquatic mating rituals. With Esquire-esque humour and agility, Jacobs manages to deftly weave his threads of familial relations, his wife and his struggle for fertility (and subsequent fatherhood), epistemology into a funny and reflective yearlong tapestry.

Jesus and Community- Gerhard Lohfink

Here are a couple insightful excerpts:
“If we ask Paul what significance the existence of the church has for pagan society in his writings...He says that God in Christ has reconciled the world to himself and that the church is now the place where reconciliation, which has already occurred in principle, is to be realized concretely. God has therefore charged the church with the service of reconciliation. The church is the place where, in a new creation, God has inaugurated reconciled society (pg 141).”

“Only in this gift of reconciliation, in the miracle of life newly won against all expectation, does what is here termed a contrast-society flourish. What is meant is not a church without guilt, but a church in which infinite hope emerges from forgiven guilt. What is meant is not a church in which there are no divisions, but a church which finds reconciliation despite all gulfs. What is meant is not a church without conflicts, but a church in which conflicts are settled in ways different from the rest of society. What is meant, finally, is not a church without the cross and without passion narratives, but a church always able to celebrate Easter because it both dies and rises with Christ (pg 147).”

unChristian:What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity...and Why it Matters- David Kinnaman & Gabe Lyons

I must say my favorite parts of this book were some of the first-hand insights from contributors at the end of each chapter. These contributors were as diverse as Jim Wallis, Rick Warren, John Stott, Rick McKinley, Churck Colson, Andy Stanley, Andy Crouch, & Shane Claiborne. A wide variety of evangelical voices and a great representation of the polyphony and variance under the umbrella of evangelicism. I remember, however, while reading, being both thankful and disheartened. Thankful that this research was done and that this book was written and pushed through a channel whereby it gets received by the largest possible needed audience. Disheartened that money and time was spent researching and writing to let us, evangelicals, those supposedly most concerned with and incarnate in the "outside, secular world," understand that we have a bad reputation and that reputation is built more on "our" hypocrisy, imperialism, prejudice, sheltered disconnect, & politics rather than "Christ and Him crucified."

Perhaps the most telling statistic was the results from a poll that revealed the disconnect between how the church's hospitality is received by pastors, regular born-again attenders, sporadic attenders, and the un-churched outsider:

Christian churches accept and love people unconditionally, regardless of how people look or what they do. (% who strongly agree)
pastors: 76%
born-again Christians: 47%
Christian churchgoers: 41%
outsiders (all ages): 20%
(pg185)

Blessed Are the Peacemakers- Wendell Berry

This short work pulls out key peacemaking passages (most prominently Matthew's Sermon on the Mount) dealing with living peaceably. Finally there is an essay, previously published in the Christian Century, titled, "The Burden of the Gospels," that seeks to synthesize these passages.

Here are a couple excerpts:
"When Jesus speaks of having life more abundantly, this, I think, is the life he means: a life that is not reducible by division, category or degree, but is one thing, heavenly and earthly, spiritual and material, divided only insofar as it is embodied in distinct creatures. He is talking about a finite world that is infinitely holy, a world of time that is filled with life that is eternal. His offer of more abundant life, then, is not an invitation to declare ourselves as certified "Christians," but rather to become conscious, consenting and responsible participants in the one great life, a fulfillment hardly institutional at all."

"If we take the Gospels seriously, we are left, in our dire predicament, facing an utterly humbling question: How must we live and work so as not to be estranged from God’s presence in his work and in all his creatures? The answer, we may say, is given in Jesus’ teaching about love. But that answer raises another question that plunges us into the abyss of our ignorance, which is both human and peculiarly modern: How are we to make of that love an economic practice?"

God Has a Dream- Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Like No Future Without Forgiveness only much, much lighter. Archbishop Tutu elaborates on the theology that roots his reconciliation efforts in South Africa over the past several decades. This theology enlists the African concept of Ubuntu, a shared humanity, the recognition of the image of God in the other. Endearing and self-deprecating at times, he begins each chapter, "Dear Child of God..." From then on you are engaged and edified by this wise, gentle, and incredibly experienced man. Catching a vision for "Hope in our Time," seems like a worthy pursuit, Tutu's contribution is helpful.

The Sacredness of Questioning Everything- David Dark

I really enjoyed this one. A pleasure: well-written, witty, and penultimately relevant for current popular Christian discourse. Something like a Christian Chuck Klosterman. This is kind of a grown-up Blue Like Jazz, the book that you might loan to someone only peripherally interested in God and spirituality, but culturally, academically aware. From his detailed exegesis of Arcade Fire songs, to his unswerving devotion to Steven Colbert's prophetic truthiness, Dark manages to produce a work both religiously and culturally discerning, and at times critical. Dark bridges the gulfs of his current Vanderbilt PhD pursuit (and talks the talk quite nicely) and his gig teaching English at a conservative Nashville Presbyterian high school. What you get is an account that asks the right questions, provides only some of the answers, lets you do the work and prayer to come up with the rest, and hails the process of loving the Lord with our heart, soul, mind, strength, and questions.

Portrait of Calvin- T.H.L. Parker

[available for free digital download at Desiring God.]
I read this biography to celebrate JC's (the less famous/divine one) 500th birthday this month. I also thought it might be nice to get someone else's than Steinmetz' account of Calvin, after all the good Doctor is an unabashed Luther man. The most striking and personal note struck came in the first few pages in regard to Calvin's choice of education. It seemed obvious for him to go to Paris to study Theology at what was considered the orthodox and best option. Instead he chose to study law elsewhere. "...the intricacies and niceties of the law was gained which he could never have won from the University of Paris. At Orleans and Bourges, the intellectual atmosphere was more free. New ideas were not bogies, but food for interesting speculation. The classics...now seemed most desirable- calling, not to danger, but to delights." This portion both particularly resonates with me and the path I've taken in my graduate studies, and strikes me with a certain sad irony that Calvin's delight came in the freedom and curiosity not as widely afforded in some modern institutions that hail his thought.

Related: SUMMER READING: PART I.

preaching: Gathering Around the Epicenter of Healing & Fount of Doxology

The following are some of my notes from The Gathering Church on 07/26/2009.

What We Want to Be About (lifted and abbreviated from churchinchapehill.com): extravagant grace of God which transforms, love people incredibly well, serving people at their point of need, and by creating a safe environment where hospitality, love, and belonging are available to all, encounter God, demonstrating and sharing the message of grace with those who feel far from God.

It is with these in aims in mind that we check against, sift, refine, and seek further understanding on our mission as a community of faith.

All summer we’ve discussed Medium & Message, Practice & Purpose, especially as we try to figure out the shapes and feels of this church body (when and where to meet, what’s the next step?) Tonight we’re not trying to innovate or tread new ground, but rather to be reminded of our message, that our medium may best suit it. That the purpose of our gathering be contained by our practice the way proper wineskins contain wine.

As we flip through the several “gathering passages” in the Gospel of Luke we ask ourselves

Why do people come to Christ?
What happens when people gather/interact with Christ?
How do they leave/what is the result?

Lk 5:24-26 Jesus heals the paralytic

"I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home." And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God. And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, "We have seen extraordinary things today."

Gives MOVEMENT.

Lk 7:13-17 Jesus raises a widow’s son

And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, "Do not weep." Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, "Young man, I say to you, arise." And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, "A great prophet has arisen among us!" and "God has visited his people!" And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country.

Gives LIFE.

Lk 13:11-13 Jesus straightens a crippled woman (disabling spirit)

And there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, "Woman, you are freed from your disability." And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God.

FREES up & Gives STRAIGHTNESS.

Lk 18:41-43 Jesus gives sight to the blind beggar

He said, "Lord, let me recover my sight." And Jesus said to him, "Recover your sight; your faith has made you well." And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.

Gives SIGHT.

Notice the movement. This motion, this narrative, answers our questions. Why do people come to Christ? What happens when people gather/interact with Christ? How do they leave/what is the result?

PUT SIMPLY: People gather to Jesus with brokenness, ailments, death, blindness, disabled. Their focus is inward, their needs are disabling, we are reminded that the woman in Luke 13 “could not straighten herself up.” Sounds familiar. People come or in some cases are carried or led to Jesus, because located in Jesus is an epicenter of healing, a hub of wholeness. Once they encounter and interact with Jesus. They leave changed. They leave whole.

From frozen and still to moving and able.

From dead to alive.

From bent to straight.

From blinded to illumined.

This is a crucial (as in cross/crossroads/no-turning-back) instance. Their whole predicament in this moment of encounter shifts from their brokenness, needs, ailments, lifelessness to Jesus and his glory. To God and the things God has done.

From inward to outward.

From dammed up tooverflowing.

From injury to doxology.

The epicenter of healing produces a fount of doxology. What a series of images for our PURPOSE! What a challenge for our PRACTICES!

As we allow our community to be shaped by this realization: each of our own stories of healing and glorification, what each of us has to offer to others in the way of healing and glorification let us now explore Jesus’ instructions for our prayer (found in Luke).

ESV/NIV	NKJV
And he said to them, "When you pray, say: "Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation."	So He said to them, “When you pray, say: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, For we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one.”
Message	Greek (+ Lohfink Jesus & Community)
So he said, "When you pray, say, Father, Reveal who you are. Set the world right. Keep us alive with three square meals. Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.	Πάτερ, ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου: ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου: Sanctify your name, let your kingdom come!

We wind up praying for God’s name to be sanctified, made holy, given its proper due, that God’s GLORY be revealed. Hallowed by your name. Sanctify your name. This enlists our image of font of doxology. That God’s name be sanctified. That the glory of God be evident in our community. What a prayer!

Secondly, we pray, let your kingdom come/set the world right. Here we seek the welfare of our neighbor, here we mend the fractures in ourselves, in each other, and in our world. Here there is healing and reconciliation. Here we may rightly love people, we may stand up for the widow and the orphan, we may feed the hungry, clothe the naked, seek justice, mercy, & humility. In short, by praying for God’s kingdom to come, for God to set the world right, we surrender ourselves and our communities to the tasks at hand.

NT WRIGHT: “Every Christian is called to work, at every level of life, for a world in which reconciliation and restoration are put into practice, and so to anticipate that day when God will indeed put everything to rights.”

Aren’t these requests suited to exactly what we saw when people gathered around Christ?: God’s revelation of glory, and God’s setting things right/bringing the kingdom.

Seeing that people come repeatedly to Christ as the connection to the Father and the epicenter of healing and making things right, we are shown what we are to be as a community. As we gather as the body of Christ we must be connections and epicenters of healing. We are able to call and to magnetize the broken world, to say as Sinner-Saints: “Come Ye Sinners, Come Ye Weary, Come Without Money and Buy.” As Jesus briskly put it, “I did not come for the well, but for the sick.” It is then that we must be a center of healing and making-right the way Jesus was throughout Luke’s gospel.

We gain inspiration from stories like the hunched woman, told to straighten up, from the man told to gather his mat and get up, from the dead that have been raised.

Lest we attempt to take on this impossible task by ourselves or forget how and why this just happened, we are shown a movement throughout Luke. In almost every instance, healing is followed by doxology. The healed cry out with a loud voice, jump up, run away, glorifying God, marveling at the revelation of God’s name. After we’ve both received and offered healing, after we’ve “tasted and seen” the goodness and mercy of God we are left with no choice but to exhibit praise, to aim our voices and point our lives to the Life-giver and Savior.

To borrow and riff on a phrase from Saint Irenaeus, “The glory of God is the church fully alive!” By that I mean, a church community, our community, celebrating and offering the new life & coming kingdom of God will exude the glory of God. It is then with the honest and beautiful rhythm of our songs tonight that we may start with a call and attraction for the broken in our midst and end by “praising God from whom all blessings flow!”

processing: Luke's "Our Father" (Luke 11)

As we've been talking at church about gathering and what it means and looks like to gather around Jesus, I've been struck by the Third Evangelist's record of the "Our Father prayer". We're certainly used to the Matthean version, and usually only waiver on whether to say trespasses or debts.

"Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread,
and forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
and lead us not into temptation."
Luke 11:2-4 (ESV)

Gerhard Lohfink astutely observes in Jesus & Community some of the grammatical and syntactical devices that allow for a translation of the first two lines as: "Father, Sanctify Your Name! (passive 3rd singular), Bring about your Kingdom!" Peterson's The Message paraphrases it as: "Father, Reveal who You are!, Set the world right!" It is with these considerations along with the larger witness of the gospel (especially this gospel aimed toward a Gentile audience and in conjunction with its "sequel", Acts) that we must form our imagination of what it means to be a community that gathers around Christ.

More to come later this week.

praying: New Litany

preaching: Mk 4:26-34

With What Can We Compare the Kingdom of God?: The Mystery of God’s Dominion in Parables
(manuscript from 06.14.09: Allensville/Trinity Charge UMC)

Our words have trouble describing and our minds have a hard time conceiving of the Kingdom of God, God’s Dominion. We sometimes recognize parts of it, or see hazy visions of it, as the Apostle Paul says, “through a glass darkly.” We trust in its power and existence the same way we trust in our God. After all, one of the best ways to understand a King is by looking to the kingdom. We do well then to try to understand this coming kingdom, especially as we pray for it to emerge. Not our kingdom, but God’s. Though we think about, pray about, and attempt to be about “kingdom work,” let us humbly and prayerfully try to learn more about this kingdom that is so complicated (yet simple) and so counterintuitive (though hopefully present to our “renewed imaginations”).

It is thus incredibly helpful and with much grace that when Jesus teaches, he illustrates for us: like a painter, kindergarten teacher, or master storyteller. In our reading this morning from Mark’s gospel, we catch a pair of a larger group of parables that Jesus tells to describe the kingdom that he earlier arrived to proclaim and the gospel that he came to declare. Jesus speaks in agrarian terms to an agricultural people. Though they obviously don’t understand the full implications of these lessons (honestly neither to we), they grasp many pieces to both describe to them and instruct them in their life after encountering Christ.

“The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.”

How does this comport with us, now? For one, the mystery and hiddenness of the kingdom of God gives way to uncertainty and insecurity- two things we do not welcome but can surely understand. Whether our uncertainty is economic (as many anxieties are) or whether it is transitional (even as we celebrate our graduates and students today, an end inevitably leads to some new beginning), we all strive for some modicum of certainty, some bit of faith, some measure of stability. We find this in the kingdom of God, which Jesus ushers and calls. We know it is present, we know God works and will “continue the work begun onto completion”. But how? Maybe just like a seed grows. Underground. Mysterious. Beyond our control and beyond our comprehension. Mystery is scary though. Mystery is not something we like to pursue. Wendell Berry wisely reminds, “Never forget: We are alive within mysteries.” Though, it is within these mysteries that we have faith. And whether we unknowingly pick it up from the store or watch it blossom out of our back window, we mysteriously receive our daily bread by means mostly beyond our control. Our science tries to explain these processes, our experience seeks to refine and replicate them, but mystery pervades. Such is the kingdom of God: put forth by God, and mysteriously brought about by God.

"We sleep and rise, night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows and we don’t know how."

I find myself stuck in this habit, failing to reflect on mystery and on the fact that I am utterly dependent on God’s provision, despite any air of independence I feign. Jesus alludes to this. In the next verse (v28), he tells of the earth “producing of itself.” The original word there looks like, sounds like, and nearly means: automatic (αυτοματη). As far as we’re concerned, God’s working and provision happens automatically. God alone produces such a harvest. With this knowledge we must continually give thanks and never slip into a habit of self-sufficiency or ingratitude.

We also mustn’t neglect to see the mystery in the continued faithfulness of God’s methods. God’s kingdom, in this parable, seems to come about out of sheer grace. We are neither totally aware of it, nor do we understand its process, yet we can see its progression: first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head…on to ripeness and harvest. One commentator mentions, and I must take her word for it, “As any good farmer will tell you, patience and hope are the spiritual sustenance for those who labor God’s fields.” It is with patience and hope that we continue to grow, progress, and mature as God-shaped citizens of a baffling kingdom.

But that’s not all… as if this image of God’s workings wasn’t demanding enough to consider, Jesus gives us another: God’s kingdom is not only mysterious, but it is also seemingly vulnerable and insignificant. Of all the plants he could have chosen, Jesus used the mustard seed. As we read from the Psalm (92), the Jewish imagination was well informed with tree language, and how God would allow the righteous to flourish like palm trees and Lebanese cedars. Those make sense enough: palm trees for their fertility and rapid growth and cedars for their stature and aroma. These are things you expect, and I’m sure the disciples expected them. However, Jesus rarely figures into our expectations. Instead of these beautiful, classic images, Jesus slips us an unlikely allusion (unlikely like the weed-like mustard plant or unlikely like a crucified Messiah wearing a crown of thorns).

God’s kingdom is like a mustard seed. Once sown, this seed grows to great size and provides great shade. Jesus takes his audience’s expectations of the kingdom of God, a massive tree of life for all, and subverts it into a bush grown from a tiny seed, whose most noticeable feature is the rest and shade it provides for the insignificant birds of the air. Let us re-order our expectations and ambitions around these. Smallness. Service. These are the images of Jesus’ kingdom. It is not coincidence then that these are also the themes that shape the lives of our great brothers and sisters in the faith. It is in the heritage of the mustard seed that Mother Theresa of Calcutta exclaims, “In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.” She was well schooled in the kingdom of God and was a great ambassador to that dominion of humility, service, and smallness. She understood what we rationalize away: the results of our work shall only be great if they are infused by love and brought about by God; that our mysterious, all-mighty God moves in ostensibly small and seemingly insignificant ways, yet with overpowering and all-consuming love. Theresa’s kingdom-work resembles this mysterious mustard work much more than it resembles the way we are usually tempted to get things done.

We are then confronted with the challenge of Jesus’ words and the testimony of those before us and among us that have chosen to forsake “their own kingdom come,” for “Thy kingdom come.” We can choose to follow and participate in the kingdom of God or we can seek our own ambitions and “lean on our own understanding.”

It is precisely when we make ourselves available to this mysterious and humble way that God yields a bounty of miraculous and useful fruit. And it is in this process that we gain a taste for it and an eye for its presence and methods. We pray that God may strengthen our hands to scatter the good news of Christ and tune our ears, adjust our eyes, and renew our minds to recognize its growth and abundance.

Benediction: And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7)

Helpful Resources: Boring, M. Eugene. Mark (Ntl): A Commentary. Westminster John Knox Press, 2006.
Marcus, Joel. Mark 1-8. Yale University Press, 2002.
Tolbert, Mary Ann. Sowing the Gospel: Mark's Work in Literary-Historical Perspective. Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1996.
Wilhelm, Dawn Ottoni. Preaching the Gospel of Mark: Proclaiming the Power of God. Westminster John Knox Press, 2008.